If you want an unvarnished, raw peek at the pig trough of corruption and sleaze, it’s all there in the 88 million-plus pages of once-secret tobacco industry documents, online and searchable in the University of California at San Francisco’s online tobacco library.

In my last article, I gave some background on both the tobacco industry’s deadly conspiracy against humanity, and on UCSF’s new 3.0 version of its online searchable tobacco documents library.

Now it’s time to look at some of the accessories to the greatest crime in human history: 100 million people killed last century, one billion expected to die this century from smoking. Every one of those deaths preventable.

To rack up this many human kills for so many tens of billions of dollars in profits over so many decades and not wind up in prison, the tobacco industry has had to pay off an incredible number of people and institutions over the years.

As the documents (some embedded below) show, many of those people were paid under the table, to better confuse, deceive, and continue plundering the public. Those covert tobacco shills are easily the worst and most offensive, because they commit fraud on a public that trusts them.

Greek journalists who criticised the Syriza administration and promoted a “yes” vote ahead of the referendum on the country's economy have come under investigation by the public prosecutor, the government media watchdog and the Journalists' Union of Athens Daily Paper (ESIEA) reports.

Nine of the country's most visible anchors and news directors from the three biggest TV channels -- Mega, Ant1 and SKAI -- have been called to answer to the ethics board of the ESIEA.

The public prosecutor's office claimed it was responding to "viewer complaints". Allegedly, the reporters under investigation breached electoral law by not allowing fair and equal time to all sides of the debate. As a result, they were accused of misinformation and one-sided coverage of the referendum.

SKAI released a statement on Wednesday defending its reporters: "All these actions have one purpose: the silencing of the 'other', any 'other' views and opinions, and to hide 'annoying' news reporting and the truth."

Germany's federal attorney general opened criminal charges against the blog Netzpolitik, radio station Deutschlandfunk reported on 4 July.

The director of Germany's domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz), Hans-Georg Maaßen, filed three charges against Netzpolitik for publishing classified information.

In February and April of this year, the blog published classified details about the Verfassungsschutz's budget planning, which included information about the agency's operations.

The federal attorney general opened the two charges against Netzpolitik for betrayal of state secrets.

The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung also reported on the same documents about the Verfassungsschutz's budget plans. Deutschlandfunk reported the attorney general is still investigating whether it will press charges against the newspaper for betrayal of state secrets.

A constant hum of racist propaganda and bad advice almost led me to death and destruction because, I was told, black people were out to kill the white identity. I’m still plagued and haunted by those lies to this day. Here’s how I got out.
In 1975 Baton Rouge, when I was 16, my racist Svengali and I conspired to burn a house occupied by black people we didn’t know as revenge for the stabbing of a friend.

I was certain no one in the house had done the stabbing, even though my Svengali had convinced himself someone there had. Our friend had been stabbed in a fight started by the Svengali and lived on a street rapidly shifting from mostly white to all black, just as my own street soon would. I’d tried to convince myself that our act would be an act of “war,” a defensive message against black “invaders.”

Thank goodness the better lessons from, ironically, my racist parents and my racist church (that had voted not to allow in African Americans) brought me to my senses and I rebelled against the Svengali, who evidently needed my support to go forward. The house stood.

And yet, the next year I participated in a gang fight at school after a hardcore racist acquaintance’s car was shot twice and his grandmother beaten by some of our African-American classmates. In my mind, I was no longer fighting all African Americans, but rather out of a sense of honor, taking down “uncivilized invaders,” as if I’d stepped out of a bastardized Sir Walter Scott novel and forward to 110 years after the Civil War.

PARIS (AFP) - The French government rejected an asylum request from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Friday, saying he did not face "immediate danger".

"France cannot act on his request," said the office of President Francois Hollande in a statement, just hours after Assange wrote an open letter to the government requesting asylum.

"The situation of Mr Assange does not present an immediate danger. Furthermore, he is subject to a European arrest warrant," Hollande's office said.

In his letter to the president, published earlier Friday in Le Monde newspaper, Assange described himself as a "journalist pursued and threatened with death by the United States' authorities as a result of my professional activities".

Assange, who turned 44 on Friday, has spent over three years holed up in the Ecuador embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations by two women, one of rape and one of sexual assault, which he denies.

Eugene Jacques Bullard may have been the 6,950th French military pilot to earn his wings during World War One, but he’s remembered as history’s very first African American aviator.

Eugene Bullard – the first African American fighter pilot.
The 21-year-old volunteer graduated from flight training on May 5, 1917 after spending more than 12 harrowing months fighting in the French army on the Western Front. One of nearly 300 U.S. citizens to serve in France’s burgeoning air corps prior to America’s entry into the war, Bullard was eventually assigned to the famous Lafayette Flying Corps. During his career as a fighter pilot, the Georgia native reportedly brought down as many as two German aircraft, however these victories remain unconfirmed. Although never earning the distinction of “ace”, Bullard still won many of his adopted country’s highest military decorations including the Légion d’honneur, the Médaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre. After the war, he would become close friends with flying legend Charles Nungesserand and Jazz luminary Louis Armstrong. Yet despite his acclaim in France, Bullard received virtually no recognition in America. Worse, after returning to the U.S. as a wounded combat veteran and an aviation trailblazer, he died penniless in obscurity.

The War Years
Bullard, who was also part Creek Indian, learned the sting of racism at a young age. One of 10 children, he claimed to have once seen his father set upon by mob of whites and almost lynched. Upon reaching his teens, young Eugene left behind a life of racial segregation and hopped a trans Atlantic steamer bound for Europe. He eventually landed in Paris where he made a living as a prizefighter.

Within weeks of Germany’s 1914 invasion of France, Bullard enlisted. Like other foreign volunteers, he was assigned to a French Foreign Legion regiment where he served with distinction as a machine gunner in action at Picardy, Artois and Champagne. During 1915, his 23,000-man unit was decimated, suffering more than 50 percent casualties. Still standing, Eugene was transferred to the celebrated 170th Infantry Regiment and sent into battle at Verdun. Wounded in the opening weeks of the epic 10-month clash, Bullard was pulled from the line to recuperate.

In October of 1916, Bullard signed on with the French air service and began flight training. By the following year he was piloting Spads and Nieuports with the 93rd Escadrille against German warplanes over the Verdun sector. A capable aviator, Eugene quickly earned the nickname the “Black Swallow of Death” (an homage to his former regiment, the 170th known as Les Hirondelles de la Mort). Heralded as one of the only black pilots of the war (and a decorated one at that), he enjoyed notoriety in the French press.

INDIANAPOLIS — On the altar, behind a row of flickering candles, the silhouette outline of a marijuana leaf shined in lights. Colored balloons occasionally bounced through the air as the minister of music led a band in a pew-shaking rendition of “Mary Jane,” the funk tribute to the drug. And Bill Levin, who was introduced as “the Grand Poobah” of this new church, finished the gathering with a simple message: “Light up, folks!”

As legislation that proponents call a religious freedom law took effect in Indiana on Wednesday, Mr. Levin’s First Church of Cannabis held its first service in a quiet neighborhood on this city’s Eastside. Mr. Levin, who is 59 and known around here for his wild puff of white hair, dreamed up the church as a way to test the state’s new, much-debated law: If the law protects religious practices, he figured, how could it not also permit marijuana use — which remains illegal here — as part of a broader spiritual philosophy?

Earlier this year, Indiana’s Republican-held legislature approved a Religious Freedom Restoration Act aimed at preventing government from infringing on religious practices. Critics said the measure was anti-gay and aimed at allowing discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the name of religion. Facing the threat of boycotts and fierce objections from business leaders, state officials swiftly added a provision explicitly blocking the measure from trumping local ordinances that bar discrimination over sexual orientation.

“This is an honest-to-God religion,” he said. “Other religions have sins and guilt. We’re going to have a really big love-in.”

Last week I was in the supermarket when a woman recognized me and started chatting me up... Turns out she's one of my very first high school girlfriends, and we hadn't seen nor heard from each other since 1994(!)